<- Back
Comments (34)
- jph> there are two separate personas that you need to “create”: The user persona and the buyer persona.Even more important: stop using personas, start using actual people. I've experienced many startups make unforced errors by conflating people into personas. A better way is to tag people with attributes, such as specific interests, explicit concerns, tasks to be done, usage goals, learning preferences, and the like.When you switch from personas to actual people, it opens up many more product experiments-- many of which are surprising and may even feel counter-intuitive to founders. Increase your startup chances of success by carefully connecting with your actual users.
- softwaredougI see a pattern where companies end up becoming consulting firms with a bit of proprietary tech. Then all their efforts are put into a handful of clients. The companies call them “design partners” but they’re basically clients.Seems like a particularly risky trap for bootstrapped companies desperate for revenue. At the same time the best companies I see out there are relentlessly customer focused.How do you draw the line between “design partner” and becoming someone’s consultant.
- ramon156I resonate a lot with these reasons. I definitely know I am not the most optimal employee, but often times the people I clash with are people that I cannot respect. Either- They think they're higher than me (you cannot collab like that)- They want it their way, despite there being multiple ways to Rome, and will cut off the conversation with orders, not arguments- They pretend to be technical and are only making the bureaucratic back-and-forth worse. You can definitely tell when someone knows what they're talking aboutSadly a lot of companies will reward these type of people by putting them in the high seats.
- mrkiouakExcellent writeup from someone who clearly cares about hitting the intersection of "good for customers, good for himself and investors, and good for employees".We'd be much better off with people thinking and acting in line with this!
- softwaredougMaybe a simple question I didn’t see here: paying yourself a salary?How true is it you’ll need to persist under extreme duress unable to pay yourself a salary? Relevant for us with kids / families where we provide the family’s income.
- airockerGreat article. Few suggestions:- If you are bootstrapped, you can build dual use technology. - All of this is predicated on the idea that building software is hard, you need 8 years to build a product that people like. Maybe this is all going away in the AI world in a couple of years.
- horticulturistThis is really well written and clearly from someone who has loved through it. I think just about all of their observations are correct (except for getting a coach - incredibly detrimental in my experience).
- frabiaGreat article! One question: you talk about market size, but you don’t address the existing competition in the space. In my opinion, two equally sized markets can have very different levels of competitive pressure.Is that something you factor into your playbook? Or do you simply not find it relevant to judge whether to enter a certain space?
- oliver236why did the author put the tickers for the companies he sold to?
- tatsuya-tamaya[flagged]